In The Spotlight: Bailout to give Uncle Sam too much power

As a citizen of this country, I feel there needs to be more reporting on an important fact of the proposed bailout package currently offered by the Bush administration.

As a citizen of this country, I feel there needs to be more reporting on an important fact of the proposed bailout package currently offered by the Bush administration.

Section 8 of the proposal is worrisome at best and smacks of the same possibility of misuse and devastation created by the Patriot Act because of the power it gives to the executive branch.

Section 8 states: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

In layman's terms, this means the transfer of $700 billion from taxpayers to buy the toxic assets of many devastated financial institutions will happen in a way that we, the people of this country, will have no say in. The courts, our elected officials and various watchdog groups will have no way to affect the outcome of this expenditure.

This will further drive up the budget deficit, with no guarantee of making up the money. It also leaves no room to hold those responsible accountable for the actions that led us to this point.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan is infuriating. We will have no ability to oversee his closed-door operations.

He will keep Wall Street firms as advisers to help him decide just how to cut deals to clean up Wall Street's mess.

Section 8 would completely transform economic policy by transferring a huge amount of power to the executive branch. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are the executive branch. That should scare the pants off of people.

I don't believe that the American people, who currently have a very low opinion of the sitting administration, would be thrilled to learn that we are about to give this same amount of power to the same idiots that have gotten us into this mess to begin with.

They can just pay off their friends and leave office with clean hands. We need change, not more of the same.